Thieves in the Temple.

good thoughts, bad thoughts.

Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) has proposed yet another "compromise" on warrantless wiretapping, and in this "compromise," among other things, suits against big telecoms would be dismissed if said big telecoms can show that Mr. Bush gave them a note saying his request for customer information was legal, and then the court couldn't determine if said request actually was legal. In other words, if Mr. Bush says it's legal, it is. Well, there's a power no chief executive would ever abuse! I suspect the only way out of this mess for Mr. Bush would be to permit a terrorist attack on U.S. soil and then whine that if he'd just had his illegal wiretaps he could have saved us! I hope he's a better man than that, but the evidence does not compel hope. The ACLU has the contact tool.

The McGovern amendment (to release information on folks who attended the School of the Americas) passed the House last week, but not by a veto-proof majority; only one Republican voted for the amendment, the soon-to-be-retiring Ray LaHood of Illinois. (Ron Paul didn't vote.) Now the bill goes to the Senate, and SOA Watch still provides the contact tool; be sure to check the "send a fax" option versus the "send an email" option. The Senate might filibuster; I guess they'll whine about national security. I didn't hear them talking about national security that when Tha Bush Mobb clumsily outed a covert operative in late 2004.

After some pressure, Burger King agreed to pay Florida farmworkers a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked. A penny a pound doesn't sound like much, but tomatoes ain't light -- the New York Times estimates the pay raise to be 71%, still below a living wage for those workers, but much better than before. Burger King follows the example set by McDonalds and Taco Bell. American Rights at Work helps you send congratulations to the farmworkers. Remember, kids: a little bad PR can go a long way.

no time to lose.

Like a Friday the 13th sequel, the supplemental war funding bill is back! The House cut off war funding two weeks ago, thanks to an incomprehensible Republican "vote present" strategy, but the Senate approved war funding, plus they stripped out troop readiness standards and wouldn't fund expanded GI benefits via taxing the rich, plus they added a bazillion dollars. But our House Reps are home this week, going to fundraisers, er, I mean listening to their constituents, and True Majority helps you call them. Since, you know, they're already listening. Really, they are. That glazed look in your House Rep's eyes is not disinterest, sleepiness, or death.

I have another stop-media-consolidation action alert from Free Press. The Senate did the right thing in nullifying new FCC rules permitting big media conglomerates to conglomerate further; now the battle moves to the House, or rather it will move to the House once the House gets back from its recess next week. I suspect the House will pass the Senate's resolution with a veto-proof majority, but we still ought to remind them we're watching.

Finally, I've received two missives about Joe Lieberman's attempt to get youtube.com to remove "content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations" (in his words). Who could have predicted that Mr. Lieberman's definition of "content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations" would be wider than youtube's? It's not like youtube just allows any old thing up on its site, either. I have been persistently annoyed, however, that the "active, pervasive and amplified voice" of terrorist organizations has interfered with my extremely serious and important effort to find every single video I saw on MTV in 1981 (even this one). And by "persistently annoyed" I mean "not at all conscious of," and that's the point -- it's not like al-Qaida can make me watch their videos.

one hit to the body.

That gosh-darn Joe Lieberman (?-CT) added a poison-pill amendment to his own climate change bill -- so he can help his buddy John McCain, of course. The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act ain't nothing to write home about, but at least it funded clean energy sources. Now, thanks to Mr. Lieberman, it diverts funds from solar and wind power toward nuclear energy, just so Mr. McCain will support it. How many times must I tell these pimps! Nuclear energy is doing just fine as an industry, thank you, and doesn't need government help. Solar and wind power need government help, because corporations continue to suppress their development. And John McCain certainly doesn't need any help in his final transmutation into a National Front Party ogre. CREDO helps you hand out the beatdowns.

You may have heard that GOP hack, excuse me, CNN political contributor Alex Castellanos thinks that "white bitch" is an accurate description of some women. Does he believe all the other nasty epithets we all know are also "occasionally" true? Maybe in his heart he does, but he'd never air that belief, since the GOP still has this pipe dream that blacks and Hispanics, for example, will one day vote for them in large numbers. Women, though, can still be trashed in public by serious analysts. And heaven help Alex Castellanos if we ever have a gay Presidential candidate. He's since apologized, but not for what he actually did wrong -- he said, essentially, that by the way, some women are, like, totally bitches, and not in a way that evokes their "toughness." Did I mention that this is the guy who came up with the racist strategy that propelled Jesse Helms to victory over Harvey Gantt in their 1990 Senate race? Here's the comment page for The Situation Room, in case you want to tell them his apology is inadequate. I think people give out apologies too easily these days.

Meanwhile, The Nations's John Nichols discusses Ralph Nader as a serious Presidential candidate -- you know, "serious" as in having all kinds of good ideas and initiatives that would attack real problems, not "serious" as in "listening to the talking heads with their obvious agendas spouting off about nothing substantial." I note, however, that as with that Los Angeles Times's report on "Iranian" weapons, Mr. Nichols's piece appears in a blog, and not The Nation's, ah, serious print issue. More progressives recognize John Nichols's name, though, and thus more progressives will follow John Nichols's blog than they'll follow some mainstream media blog, so I guess that's something.

king of the mountain.

Congress votes today on an amendment to a defense authorization bill that would force the School of the Americas (a.k.a. WHINSEC, a.k.a. where torturers and assassins learn their trade) to release the names of graduates and instructors. That may not seem like much, but (if I may paraphrase Justice Brandeis) a little light may be an adequate disinfectant, especially since each of the last three years has seen Freedom of Information Act requests pertaining to the SOA denied. You may send a fax from this location, being sure to click the "send a fax" box, and you may contact your House Reps at 202.224.3121 and urge them to vote yes on the McGovern-Sestak-Bishop amendment.

Once again, Tha Bush Mobb wants its pet missile defense and new nuke programs funded. Even Republican Congresses refused new nuke funding, but occasionally Democratic Congresses like to prove how macho they are by funding stupid weapons programs, and with an election coming up, you can't count on their backbone. Amendment 115 (a John Tierney production) would cut funding for the missile defense program that can't even do well in rigged tests and which could be foiled by mylar balloons -- and would also better fund non-proliferation agencies and veterans' domestic programs, just in case anyone thought being a liberal was only about saying no to Bush. On the other hand, Amendment 39 (sponsored by Steve Pearce, soon-to-be vanquished foe of Tom Udall -- or Heather Wilson! -- in New Mexico's upcoming Senate race) would increase funding for unneeded new nukes. Council for a Livable World helps you vote yes on 115 and no on 39. (For more on this issue, visit the Union for Concerned Scientists' page.)

Finally, Media Matters reports on the "liberal" media's propensity to lie and distort in its coverage of illegal immigration. You know, like when the "liberal" media says illegal immigrants steal your Social Security (they don't), don't pay taxes (they do) commit more crime than citizens (they don't), and are part of a conspiracy to take the Southwestern USA back for Mexico (what the?). Media Matters also provides a petition to Messrs. Dobbs, O'Reilly, and Beck demanding that they improve their coverage, but I'm not going to link to it, because a) out of those three, only Mr. Dobbs might give a hoot what you think, and b) really, any correspondence should go to their bosses, since they're the ones who make the most money off their employees' fearmongering.

tryouts for the human race.

The Jerusalem Post reported on Mr. Bush's plans to attack Iran before he leaves office (though that report seems to have gone down the memory hole, replaced with one foregrounding the White House's denial of said report). But this ain't tough math. S. 356 says that "any offensive military action taken against Iran must be explicitly approved by Congress before such action may be initiated." You know, like it says in the Constitution. What a shame that Mr. Bush has to be reminded of this simple fact, but the cowardly Congresses of the past eight years must take some blame for that. True Majority provides the contact tool.

Public Citizen helps you oppose a six-state "demonstration program" that could put 100,000-pound trucks on the roads. No doubt they'll point to savings in gas and oil, but I can't imagine there'll be that much in savings if the trucks are almost 25% heavier, and I figure the savings in money and natural resources will be more than offset by the larger accidents caused by larger trucks that can't brake as quickly and don't handle as well. As you know, good government is always a balancing act.

my other voice.

The House cut off funding for the war last week, thanks in part to the gaggle of Republicans who voted "present" for the supplemental appropriations bill; the Senate takes up war funding as early as today. Council for a Livable World helps you tell your Senators to vote no on more war funding. Congress will hold all kinds of things hostage to the bill -- timetables, GI benefits, and the like -- but we're the people. We don't have to hold anything hostage to anything. And we certainly don't have to be hostages. Being against the war has nothing to do with supporting better GI benefits, for example, just because the politicians have decided it does. Be sure to tell your Senator that.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: HB-2420 and SB-346 would redraw Pennsylvania's districts so that they're more competitive. Recent events at the national level have suggested that if things get bad enough, gerrymandering doesn't matter, but do any of us really want things to get bad enough? The big two parties have it too cushy, frankly, and they ought to fight for votes everywhere they run, and they ought to fight for votes by appealing to their constituents, rather than bypassing them, as gerrymandering lets them do all too easily. Unfortunately, if this legislation doesn't pass before the summer recess, it won't count for the 2011 redistricting -- the next redistricting after that comes in 2021. Common Cause helps you support this noble effort.

Meanwhile, Danny Schechter, the News Dissector, suggests that the economic collapse we're now seeing was Tha Bush Mobb's plan all along -- part of the plan to, in Mike Whitney's words, "destroy the labor movement, crush the middle class, quash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, reduce our foreign debt by 50 or 60%, force a restructuring of America’s debt, privatize all public assets and resources, and create a new regime of austerity measures which will divert more wealth to the banking and corporate establishment." Now, in fairness, most of Mr. Schechter's evidence is kind of circumstantial, and reasonable people disagree about whether the devaluing of the dollar is really a bad thing. Still, Tha Bush Mobb leaves so much wreckage in their wake that it's our duty to consider whether it's deliberate. I mean, it's easy to do better by accident.

over and over.

Last week, the Senate voted almost unanimously to nullify the FCC's most recent media consolidation rules; now the fight goes to the House. Even Tom DeLay's House voted at least twice to overturn Michael "The Lesser" Powell's even looser media consolidation restrictions, but now's no time to get complacent. I work toward an America where no one owns more than one media outlet, of any kind, anywhere. Calling your House Rep, using the tools in the upper left-hand corner, and asking him or her to support the Senate's efforts to fight media consolidation, is a good step in that direction.

Also last week, the House approved a "new GI bill" (actually an amendment to a supplemental spending bill) that would increase the assistance government gives to veterans for educational and living expenses. Rumor has it that the Senate would never stand for such a thing, however, because the amendment also raises income taxes on approximately three one-thousandths of the population -- that is, folks who make more than half a million bucks a year. You may want to call your Senators and ask them which is more important: adequate benefits for soldiers, or protecting the moneyed interests from having to pay an extra one-half of one percent on their income taxes. The forces aligned against this bill will say their opposition is about anything else, of course. But we know what it's really about -- protecting their kind, instead of the soldiers who've ostensibly gone to fight for all of us. And that's what we'll press.

penny rants for the day of May 17, 2008.

The National Review's Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism: How Incongruity Equals Irony and Thus Also Epiphany, squeezes out another candidate for Worst Article Ever. Perhaps the most garish thing about it is the extended (and boy I do mean extended) analogy that first asks you to imagine that the proverbial better mousetrap builder equals the oil company, and then "answers" your obvious objection to such an equation by saying "Exactly!" As in, I meant that to be a bad analogy all along, in order to prove that something else is bad! Ain't I clever? In other news, he thinks "alternative energy" is all about ethanol, takes jobs and pensions (and not CEO compensation) hostage whenever someone threatens to tax corporate profit, paints a scenario in paragraph 11 that implodes in glorious illogic, and generally thinks pursuing policy for moral reasons is kind of square. All of which makes a pretty strong case for just talking to the reader -- you know, as if you're equals or something.

Though the "gas tax holiday" apparently sounded like a good idea to a majority of voters on tax day, now it doesn't. My objection to gas taxes has always been the same: they hit working people harder than they hit rich people, since the rich don't drive special rich-people cars with 2,000-gallon tanks. And my objection to the "gas tax holiday" also has not changed: the government dedicates gas taxes to infrastructure repair, and the "holiday" might net you forty bucks over the course of the summer. Could it be that public approval of the "gas tax holiday" sank after Mr. Obama rejected it?

I've seen a few clips of BBC talking head/new great journalistic hope Jeremy Paxman -- you can find them pretty easily at youtube.com -- and, well, I'm just not that impressed with him. Sure, he aims at the right targets now, but a few more years of easy money and he could morph into Dennis Miller with an accent. His "takedown" of Ann Coulter, in particular, is highly overpraised -- I thought Ms. Coulter easily parried questions like "does this book get any better?" and "you really believe all that?" Why not ask her to prove that America treats liberalism as its religion with more than a few scattered anecdotes about the public school system? Why not ask her how liberalism could be a "religion" in a country where the vast majority of its citizens call themselves Christian and where politicians must make frequent shows of their religious faith while campaigning? Hell, why not ask her to define "religion"?

everybody wants to go to heaven.

EnergySolutions, which manages nuclear waste dumps, has asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for permission to import 20,000 tons of low-level nuclear waste from reactors in Italy. And, er, this nuclear waste will be taking quite a trip through the U.S. -- landing in South Carolina and Louisiana, then trekking to Tennessee to get incinerated, some of it even hi-tailing it to Utah for disposal. No corporation has ever asked the government to import foreign waste before, and I'd think we'd want to think hard about something like this before doing it, conservative as that may sound. Thankfully, Reps. Gordon (D-TN), Matheson (D-UT) and Whitfield (R-KY) -- who all represent districts that'll be saying hi to nuclear waste on this tour -- have introduced H.R. 5632, which would ban importation of low-level radioactive waste. Public Citizen helps you call members of the Energy and Air Quality Subcommittee, which will be considering the bill.

My friends, it's been a very interesting week -- I haven't covered nearly as much as I've wanted to cover. The Senate, in a near-unanimous vote, nullified the FCC's loosening of media consolidation rules. Also, the House passed a GI Bill for Iraq/Afghanistan war vets funded by a one-half of one percentage point increase on income taxes for people making over a half mil. And the California Supreme Court overturned laws against gay marriage in that state. I could go on about all the bad stuff that happened this week, too, much of it concerning dumb things Don Rumsfeld said, but even much of that is the result of a good thing: bloggers (and commenters) following up on the Pentagon propaganda story when the "liberal" media didn't.

readings for the day of May 15, 2008.

Citizens for Tax Justice provides more evidence that -- all together now! -- the majority of Tha Bush Mobb's tax cuts for capital gains and dividends goes to the richest three-fifths of one percent of Americans. That's not just across the country, but in each and every state. Dividends used to be taxed as income -- since they are, like, income -- but Tha Bush Mobb cut the dividend tax rate to 15% in 2003, which effectively cut the dividend tax rate in half for rich folk. Folks making over $10 million benefited to the tune of over $1.7 million in dividend and capital gains tax cuts in 2005 -- while folks making less than $30,000 a year pulled in an average of five dollars. (When the income fields are this narrow, it's OK to use averages -- how likely is it that any $30,000 earner got a $15,000 windfall from these cuts?) And one more time, rich people don't get more out of these cuts because rich people pay more into the system -- they get more because Tha Bush Mobb drew up the legislation to help rich people more than poor people. And on and on.

Heise Online features an interview with Dr. Barbara van Schewick on network neutrality. Dr. van Schewick works in Germany, but has been keeping up with the American debate on network neutrality, and what do you know -- just like America's ahead of Europe in First Amendment rights, America's ahead of Europe in the network neutrality debate, as many European countries haven't drawn up net neutrality guidelines. Dr. van Schewick also provides yet more ammunition for net neutrality supporters, including a point I'm a bit ashamed I didn't think of -- that the more we permit corporations to "manage" their networks, the more they'll push their own competitors off their networks, meaning that fewer smaller entrepreneurs will bother with creating new and competing products. Hard to believe, Harry, that corporations are the real roadblock to both competition and innovation.

get down on it!

I'm still hearing that the House might cave on warrantless wiretapping to Senator Rockefeller (D-WV) and Mr. Bush. So here's an ACLU contact tool and a CREDO contact tool. You can use them both because the former goes to your House Rep while the latter goes to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- who's getting a primary challenge from the left in her district, by the way, and how freakin' overdue is that?

Both House and Senate passed whistleblower protection laws last year (which would better protect good folks who speak out against abuses in their own agencies), but haven't yet conferenced out a bill that'll satisfy both houses. Public Citizen helps you tell them to get down on it. I haven't heard if Mr. Bush will veto the legislation, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did, as his Administration (sic) likes to alter the research of its scientists to fit Bush Mobb dogma. Let me guess at the reason for a veto: whistleblower protections will hamper the President's ability to get the right advice from his advisors! Actually, it'd be less funny if it were true.

In other news, Mr. Bush must love wounded vets, because he makes so many of them -- though apparently he doesn't want to make it easy for them to vote, because they might, I don't know, vote against war. The Veterans Administration permitted voter registration drives in VA hospitals on April 25, then reversed itself on May 5. The reversal cites "Hatch Act restrictions" and, of course, the need to "avoid disruptions to facility operations." Sens. Kerry and Feinstein argue that "Hatch Act restrictions" don't apply, but if the Hatch Act really barred voter registration drives in VA hospitals, there wouldn't be an "and" after it. The "and" is what really keeps those dirty hippie voter registration people out.

it only takes a minute.

The Public Safety Employer-Employee Cooperation Act (S. 2123) would guarantee minimum collective bargaining rights in the handful of states that don't already guarantee such rights. S. 2123 would permit good folks -- who may include firefighters, cops, and EMTs -- to bargain over wages, benefits, and working conditions, would provide a dispute resolution mechanism, and would mandate state courts to enforce labor contracts. The bill passed rather overwhelmingly in the House, and, incredibly, has 11 Republican co-sponsors in the Senate. Let's see how the rest of those Senate Republicans want to spin their opposition. We are at war! Giving workers the right to make more money would jeopardize national security! To which I always say: so that's how we lost World War II! American Rights at Work provides the contact tool.

In other news, the U.S. government failed to blame Iran for a boatload of munitions found in Iraq last week, said failure representing a reversal from previous weeks. The reason? U.S. military officials are, apparently, having a hard time tying Iran to the weapons. Read the post and marvel at some of the machinations therein -- like when the U.S., so anxious to go to war with Iran, says it's up to the Iraqis to show the Iran-produced munitions to the world! Wow! That's like when Tha Bush Mobb outsourced its "Iraq WMD discovery" to Rick Santorum in 2006. Note well, however, that the above-linked bombshell doesn't appear in a proper Los Angeles Times article but a blog post. Because the respectable, serious, "liberal" media knows better than to derail Tha Bush Mobb's flimsy case for war. (Read the comments to said blog post, by the way -- they're usually edifying, even hilarious -- but note that the most recent comment is always at the top, which is a bit disorienting, for me at least.)

I get up I get down.

The Senate Commerce Committee unanimously passed the "resolution of disapproval" that would stop FCC efforts to loosen media consolidation rules. Now the battle goes to the full Senate. Getting a majority seems likely, given that media issues tend to attract Republican free agents (like Messrs. Lott and Pickering) more often than other issues, but a majority wouldn't be enough to override a Mr. Bush veto, and do you suppose the "liberal" media will even cover a Mr. Bush veto of a bill that they don't want either? At this moment, the right-winger Rupert Murdoch stands poised to own three newspapers in New York City, in addition to his two TV stations and his cable news outlet that also lives in New York City. That's what we're up against. But we've already won once. Free Press helps you call your Senator.

In other news, Public Citizen tells the FDA that the Ortho-Evra contraceptive patch has so many problems that it ought to be removed from the market (this after the patch has undergone at least two label changes relating to side effects over the last three years). In short, if you use this patch, you're more likely to get blood clots, your estrogen level is more likely to go through the roof, and you're no less likely to get pregnant versus using the pill. I've long decided that the only thing that's going to eradicate abortion (the aim of pro-choicers as well as pro-lifers) is technology, but obviously the technology has to be good. And yet, given that the Ortho-Evra patch is the only one on the market, we can't rule out an FDA scheme to discredit the very idea of a contraceptive patch. The FDA is very much a Bush Mobb agency, after all -- as much so as the EPA these days.

come back to us spiders!

The House votes today on a $162.6 million supplemental war spending package. Council for a Livable World helps you say no go. Why? One, we want the war to be over, and defunding it will end it. Two, war costs should already be in the budget, and Congress should not be enabling Mr. Bush to keep war costs out of the budget. Three, Democrats actually made the package bigger so they wouldn't have to deal with any more requests before the election -- like Mr. Bush won't thwart that strategy by spending the money faster and (probably) blaming Iran for it. The Democrats really don't know anything about anything, do they? How does a party let George W. Freakin' Bush beat them time after time? Have they no shame?

Speaking of that damn war, major retirement and pension funds continue to invest in Iraq war profiteer Kellogg Brown Root, though it's suffered some big PR hits lately -- for skimming on its obligation to pay taxes to the government that gives it its no-bid contracts, and intimidating employees who've been raped. Probably funds investing in KBR now are making a killing, but I'd feel tainted if I had any money in any of those. Thing is, if you do have money in any of those -- including public employee retirement systems in California, New York, Ohio and Texas -- you're a shareholder, really, with (at least in theory) the power to change KBR's behavior. Start exercising that power here.

Finally, because we're about solutions here, the Progressive States Network describes how states can fight the destruction of the manufacturing economy in the U.S. Good folks at the state level have developed models for responding rapidly to layoffs, anticipating and heading off layoffs before they happen, and (even!) revitalizing the manufacturing sector in the U.S. (which strategy includes "greening" said sector). This last one must seem an awfully distant hope, but the alternative is death: no country has ever survived, in the long run, without making the stuff it sells. And, no, we're not going to be any different in that respect.

bright future in sales.

As we discussed here the other day, the "liberal" media has, perhaps not coincidentally, thus far avoided following up on the New York Times story describing how the Pentagon fed pro-war talking points to "liberal" media programs. Oh, and how many Pentagon-affiliated analysts had ties to military contractors who've made money off this war. We've seen very little from the cable "news" organizations, of course, but more appallingly we've seen nothing from the broadcast news networks. Brian Williams defending his network's analysts on his blog doesn't count. Nobody reads his blog. You know, figuratively, nobody. The FAIR link above contains contact information for ABC, CBS, and NBC, so that you may ask them when they're going to respond to the charges contained in the NYT report. You may want to remind them that the government still licenses their affiliates.

California residents, take note: a $10 billion bond issue, which would start laying tracks for high-speed rail connecting major cities, faces the voters this fall, and AB 3034 -- the Safe, Reliable High-Speed Passenger Train Bond Act for the 21st Century -- would make high-speed rail better, despite its unwieldy name. Among other things, the bill would limit the number of stops (so that it's still high-speed, you know, and also to limit sprawl). Communicate your will here.

Finally, over 40 states have passed laws giving residents the ability to "freeze" their credit -- as you may recall, you've helped passed these laws, using action alerts posted here. Now Consumers Union helps you learn how to use credit freezes, with this handy map. You just click on your state and read. That is, you click on your state's name, on the left; don't click on your state on the map, because that just makes a bigger map. (Thankfully, clicking on the bigger map doesn't create an even bigger map, because then your head would hurt.)

well you needn't.

Word on the street is the House, firm so far on Mr. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, are preparing to cave -- on basket warrants, on big telecom immunity, everything. I don't know what's happened in the last week or so to make them so antsy all of a sudden -- unless one of them checked the calendar and discovered it was an election year and therefore time for the Democrats to be strong on terror. Of course, when they permit Mr. Bush to eviscerate the Fourth Amendment with his fearmongering, the Democrats appear weak. But it doesn't matter. The ACLU helps you tell your House Rep you won't be ambushed.

I have two action alerts regarding impending Congressional action on product safety: one from USPIRG and one from Public Citizen. Of course, big corporations plan to gut product safety reform in the House/Senate conference. You'd think they'd remember all of last year's troubles related to lead in toys and bisphenol-A and phthalates in plastics. Then again, big corporations also run the "liberal" media, so maybe too many Americans don't remember, either. So? We'll just pester Congress harder-louder-longer.

Consumers Union helps you support legislation requiring drug companies to publicly report gifts to doctors. Doctors get an average of 28 visits from drug company reps every week -- which, under ideal circumstances, is approximately 28 more visits per week than your doctor gets from you. And those reps are trying to sell stuff; all you're trying to do is get better. It's not like we're asking for pharmaceuticals to stop lobbying doctors. We're asking for a little accountability. In this sick, immoral, and decadent time, that's too much for a lot of big corporations.

Finally, Alexander Cockburn appears convinced that war with Iran is looming. (It's the second item in his weekly diary, after all the Barack Obama stuff.) Mr. Cockburn cites the Presidential (sic) "finding" you've probably heard about, which authorizes covert operations against the Iranian regime, including assassinations. And our good friends, the Congressional Democrats, funded it. Apparently moving Gen. Petraeus into CENTCOM (where Admiral Fallon vehemently opposed war with Iran) not only distances the General from his failed "surge," but also puts him in a position to ramp up war with Iran -- which he might do before Congress in September, by "reporting" on Iranian "complicity" in al-Qaeda attacks in Iraq, never mind that Iran (like the Iraqi government) is Shi'ite and al-Qaeda is Sunni. What's it going to take to get these Democrats to stand up?

penny rants for the day of May 4, 2008.

Hard to believe, Harry, that the "liberal" media has shied away from the New York Times report describing "liberal" media complicity in Tha Bush Mobb's Pentagon propaganda program. And Tha Bush Mobb stops clocks like no one else -- how else could World Net Daily's Lester Kinsolving, an OG of right-wing talk radio, become a temporary ally of the truth by insisting that worst-ever press secretary Dana Perino call on a fellow who had his hand up for an entire press conference and several previous ones? Here's where to watch Ms. Perino, previously skewered in this space for not knowing what the Cuban Missile Crisis was, fielding (and not answering) the only question the "liberal" media's thrown at her about the Pentagon propaganda program, and then exiting with a quickness. And, er, it wasn't actually a reporter who posed it, but a blogger. The "liberal" media's shame is infinite!

PolitiFact describes yet another email "whisper" campaign about Barack Obama, this one alleging (among other things) that Mr. Obama's full name is Barack Hussein Muhammad Obama (because, apparently, "Muhammad" is the only Muslim-sounding male name the email's author knows). Unfortunately for the Obama-haters, public records don't substantiate this claim. The birth certificate might or might not, but the Obama campaign won't release it, which the liberal news gateway hinessight.com suggests is "perhaps adding fuel to the rumor." See? It's Barack Obama's fault this rumor's gaining ground! Seriously, I wouldn't be releasing my birth certificate to anyone if I were him. That would be a set-up for identity theft, and I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

Factcheck.org fields too narrow a question about taxes, namely: "What percent of taxes does the top 1 percent pay and what percent of the income do they make?" Which question implies that if the rich's tax slice is larger than their income slice (which it is), of course we should be fair and cut their taxes. But think of all the more relevant questions unasked: what percentage of the top 1 percent's own income do they pay in taxes? How do tax cuts for the rich affect the amount of revenues collected (and thus, to some degree, how balanced the budgets are)? What do the rich do with their newfound largesse? At least factcheck's answer subtly raises even more questions: why doesn't the CBO count stock options and bonuses as "income"? Why do the rich pay so little in excise taxes and Social Security taxes? If "real bracket creep" affects high-income earners more than the rest of us, what does that say about income inequality? And that's all before we get to the matter of why we talk of the "top 1 percent" as rich, rather than some much richer wedge of that top 1 percent.

Finally, FAIR provides a long list of pro-war folks being wrong about the Iraq War and snidely ripping folks like me, who were right, for being wrong. There's a palpable desperation in their remarks, as though they knew they were wrong and were just lashing out at people who knew better than they did. What a heroic and glorious time in our nation's history that was! What pride these folks must have in their rage and hatred! For a moment I couldn't decide if the desperate flailing of, say, Chris Matthews circa 2003 was better or worse than the placid ignorance of, say, Sean Hannity circa whatever year it is or was. Then I decided that the one is probably just as calcuated as the other.

a town called malice.

House Judiciary Chair John Conyers has invited a few Bush Mobbers to appear at a May 6 hearing on torture. These Bush Mobbers include John Ashcroft, George Tenet, John "OK to crush a baby's testicles if the President says-so" Yoo, and Douglas Feith. But none of these folks have agreed to appear, and Messrs. Ashcroft and Yoo have, in fact, refused. You'd think they'd want to clear the air about those media reports that have them discussing torture down to methods and numbers. Well, then again, Mr. Yoo is also the mastermind behind the patently unconstitutional "the President doesn't need to follow the Geneva Conventions" theory, so maybe more light is not what he desires at this moment. But ACLU helps you send a "citizens' subpoena" to these folks. (I might have served up real subpoenas first, but Mr. Conyers apparently plans to do that next.)

Consumers Union helps you support food safety in Congress. Of course you see the need for stronger food safety laws -- that recent recall of 143 million pounds of beef might have stuck in your mind. Or you may have lost a beloved pet to bad pet food a year or so ago. Or, maybe, you've reasoned that we get so much food from countries that don't check their food safety like they should, and that Tha Bush Mobb's knee-jerk opposition to any federal intervention in any matter has crippled the FDA's ability to check food safety. Anyway, you're not a Commie if you believe in your government insuring food safety on your behalf. Also, you're not a terrorist if you buy as much locally-grown food as possible.

Meanwhile, Atrios spots George Will slamming Mr. Obama's plan to raise the ceiling on payroll taxes. Mr. Will wants you to think that a married couple making $140,000 would be subject to payroll taxes beginning at $107,000 -- but that's ludicrous, since payroll taxes get calculated on individual paychecks, not some combined-income formula based on information to which your employer wouldn't have access. Atrios suggests that Mr. Will, in claiming that Mr. Obama is "out of touch," is himself out of touch. But of course we know it's worse than that -- Mr. Will counts on you not knowing anything about taxes. (Happily, Mr. Will's fuzzy math hasn't slipped by any of his article's commenters, at this writing.)

penny rants for the day of May 1, 2008.

Tha Bush Mobb plans to mandate better automobile fuel economy, but don't go celebrating. Their proposed rule exceeds Congress's mandate by only a little, and Congress's mandate is none too high a bar to begin with. Furthermore, as OMB Watch reports, the proposed rule pre-empts the possibility of stronger state fuel economy rules, and all I can say is, how very federalist of them. We could go on, I suppose, about the need for a more comprehensive fuel economy policy that would encourage alternate fuels, public transportation, car and bike sharing, and the like. But Tha Bush Mobb is too bold for that.

OMB watch cites five House bills that would attack corruption in the federal contracting process -- that is, if the Senate approves any of them. I'm guessing the Senate will filibuster them because federal contracting is a national security issue now. After all, who will do the important work of reconstructing the next 11 countries Republicans invade if they're going to have to follow rules and such? Don't bet that the "liberal" media will spotlight Republican greed, either, busy as they are blaming Barack Obama for failing to erase Jeremiah Wright from human history. As fate would have it, Mr. Obama has sponsored contracting reform legislation in the Senate.

I've noticed that Ron Paul hasn't dropped out of the race yet, though he's been mathematically eliminated from the race for the Republican nomination. I've also noticed that Mr. Paul has said he won't endorse John McCain and that he won't run as an independent. Anyone else see a loophole? None of the above precludes him from running as a Republican. Recall that Harry Truman had not one but three major party opponents in 1948 -- "Progressive Democrat" Henry Wallace and "States' Rights Democrat" Strom Thurmond (then a spry youngster of 293!) nearly siphoned off enough votes to send Republican Tom Dewey to Pennsylvania Avenue. Maybe Ron Paul will call himself a "Constitutional Republican" or something. I don't know what other roadblocks he'd run into these days; I imagine they vary from state to state. But I do not believe the Ron Paul 2008 story is over.

UPDATE. And sure enough, you can still get an "I support Ron Paul" button from yahoo! But not an "I support Ralph Nader" button, alas -- let alone an "I support Bob Barr" button.